It's OK, don't worry your pretty little head about it, I don't want you to hurt yourself. — StreetlightX

That is not excusable. Self-destructing when you're on the right side of the argument is not only unnecessary, it's outright bizarre.

Is the fear that Donald Trump could successfully overturn a lost election particularly realistic? Some people seem to worry, and Trump himself seems to think, that having a significant Republican majority in the SC, including a couple of judges who no doubt would do whatever Trump told them, would make the court his to control. But while I can see things like Roe v Wade coming under threat, I can't imagine even a majority of Republican judges voting to suspend democracy and effectively institute fascism. Aren't these fears a little too... well... crazy? If Trump loses, he loses. The biggest problem is surely American patriotism. A vote against a sitting President, even one as demonstrably moronic and owned as Bush Jr, is no sure thing.

Then why have a mind at all if all we need are brains and their functions? — Harry Hindu

That's a purely dualistic question: from a physicalist point if view, we do not have brain function *and* mind; they're the same thing. But from that dualistic perspective, it's a fine question. What is the point of a non-materialist mind in addition to brain function? None that I can see, which is what I meant by:

Otherwise one ends up in a turf war that dualism can only lose. You might accept that yes that brain activity does indeed describe a particular mental activity, but that's -not all that mind is-. As neuroscience explains more and more, this separable dualistic component must necessarily retreat, else resort to (1) above. — Kenosha Kid

I'm getting severe deja vu here. Have we had this exact conversation already?

Here is a simple argument why I think, if monism is the case, mind is the fundamental rather than the material world.
You can't locate consciousenss in the material world. But you can locate the appearance of the material world within consciousness. — Yohan

Well, you can. So...

Say you are talking to Jim. Jim has access to his awareness, thoughts, feelings, etc. He knows what it is like to exist as himself from his first person experience. — Yohan

This doesn't mean anything. What does it mean to have access to one's awareness?

Which side of Jim is more essential? — Yohan

It's a false dichotomy, and the conclusion you're aiming for does not prove anything. Let's agree that the thing that makes Jim Jim is his mind. Outside of some religious idea of a soul -- i.e. if we're to remain in the realm of science and reason not hocus or pocus -- this doesn't mean that mind is more fundamental.

Brain function is clearly not more fundamental than brain. For brain function, you need a brain. The opposite is not true.

Hence it appears to me that consciousness is the property of whole systems on not of its isolated part, this has already been posited out as systems reply to Searle. — debd

Am I reading this right..? Are you using the Chinese room argument to suggest that individual neurons aren't conscious?

Nah. Couldn't see my partner for a while, travelled to see her, quarantine restrictions got reimposed while I was here! — fdrake

Ah okay. That actually sounds quite nice.

The president of the United States of America has spent the last four years fighting for and alongside racists and white supremacists, while simultaneously using the powers of the presidency fighting against the movement for racial justice reform at every turn, going so far as to singlehandedly reverse public policies designed to implement the necessary change.

He is racial injustice incarnate. — creativesoul

:strong:

I'll be in quarantine for a couple of weeks soon. I shall try and get the field of real numbers with its order defined in that time. — fdrake

Oh are you or a loved one I'll? Sorry to hear. Be safe!

So the design if the experiment is dependent on consciousness, but the results of the experiment arent? — Harry Hindu

As I've said before, I don't protest the claim that consciousness can collapse wavefunctions, only the claim that consciousness is the only thing that collapses wavefunctions.

You word the above like the idea is astonishing. But it's extremely mundane and everyday. If I drop a pebble into the river from the bridge, I know I'm responsible for the result. I don't need to renew my responsibility to ensure that result. That the pebble splashes into the water is an inevitable consequence of me dropping it, not of my observing it thereafter. Likewise the boobies pattern is an inevitable consequence of me forcing the electrons to scatter in an in principle discernible way, not of my actually discerning it. It is thus the measurement apparatus, not the knowledge of the measurement, that is crucial. And this is the Copenhagen interpretation. Which is all I was saying.

When people start to get emotional, be it religious people or analytical philosophers (who are actually worse in this sense), I have noticed that some of the moderators start to get emotionally confused, that is, they lose their objectivity and start adjusting their actions to cater to the complaints of those who are dysregulated. This technique should not work but it does. — JerseyFlight

I'd be surprised if any moderator here reading the first few exchanges would lose their objectivity in the OP's favour: the OP was obviously triggered and moderators see this all the time. Correct me if I'm wrong.

But your general point, oh yes! If there's a state of equilibrium and someone perturbs that, there seems to be a human bias to give more weight to the first narrative they hear. It's very easy to go from nothing to a false story, because there's nothing to contradict. It's much more difficult to get from a false story to a true one because it throws up contradictions that the first story did not. As such, the first narrator gets a receptive audience, the second a sceptical one.

Which is maybe why reactions sometimes seem erroneously emotive: it's an instinct based on past behaviour to control the narrative. The OP has likely had success with this in the past. Coercive controllers work this way too, always making sure that the first story their victim's family hear is their version, She's nuts, she's losing it, I did nothing and she accused me. Darling daughter gets sideways glances henceforth.

Anyway, y'all seem made up now. Sorry for late response, I wasn't getting notifications.

I already showed that the experiment is dependent upon it being conceived in a mind before its assembled with "mechanical" devices that produce results for conscious beings to observe. How does a conception become an experiment that isn't dependent upon the conception? How does a non-mechanical idea become a mechanistic experiment? — Harry Hindu

That is not particular. The experiment above still distinguishes between such systems that demonstrate consciousness-dependence and those that don't. And they don't. Again, it's not an argument about QM, which would predict statistical outcomes for superposed terms of consciousness was required for collapse. Pointing at another bit where consciousness is involved doesn't effect that. It wouldn't if consciousness *was* responsible for that particular collapse either.

Then that is your problem because you keep using referring to mental properties when describing the experiment, as I pointed out. — Harry Hindu

An experiment that does not demonstrate a dependence on consciousness where it is claimed there should be one. I think the problem is you're not really talking about QM. If there is a superposition to be collapsed by consciousness, say 0.5*alive + 0.5*dead, what that means is that if you run the experiment 1000 times, you expect approx 500 alives and 500 deads.

In the case I cited, there are not 500 stripes and 500 pairs of boobies. There are 1000 pairs of boobies. You may still insist that nonetheless it was human consciousness that collapsed those boobies (ouch!) But let's be very clear: we are then no longer discussing QM, but rather some QM- inspired hippy dippy shit.

Then I have no idea what you are trying to say by bringing up this experiment in a thread about the fundamental nature of reality. — Harry Hindu

Why does my not understanding your language mean you no longer understand my point? I wasn't confused by your argument: I didn't know what it was.

Is the implication that "brain activity" is what generates the mind? — Yohan

Hi.

In neuroscience, brain function is mind. You're quite right that a non-materialist can define mind differently, but then she cannot speak about the mind of neuroscience in the same breath. Insisting on a difference is problematic in two ways:
1. If you wish to claim that a mental activity that corresponds to a brain activity is not causally linked, one has to reproduce the success of neuroscience at explaining such correlations without the benefit using what is apparently to neuroscientists accurate, predictive and obvious. It's a difficult position to be in.
2. Otherwise one ends up in a turf war that dualism can only lose. You might accept that yes that brain activity does indeed describe a particular mental activity, but that's -not all that mind is-. As neuroscience explains more and more, this separable dualistic component must necessarily retreat, else resort to (1) above.

So you'd need linear operators on vector spaces, differentiation+integration, complex numbers... If I gave you definitions of those things, would you be able to to do what you needed to do with them? Can you do the thing where you go from linear operators on vector spaces to linear operators on modules if required?

The vector space construction needs mathematical fields (commutative rings with multiplicative inverses), which needs groups. — fdrake

Yes to all of the above. I'm still catching up, I can do complex numbers if need be, I've done it before. The other thing we need is category theory. I don't think we need to do any integrals but we need to know about them. I guess a good aim atm is continuum mathematics.

Sorry, specifically a quantum field.

Brains don't cease to exist when they stop functioning. However, you can't have brain function without brain.

And that's just brains. There's toasters, rope, jelly, shoes, trees, water, air, chinken nungents, mud, sand, oil, car keys, bedsheets, cups, and so on, all material things that show no evidence of thought, that we would be astonished to discover had thoughts. And no evidence of thoughts without some material foundation.

Sounds like consciousness is deeply involved to me. — Harry Hindu

And yet the experiment proves it is not. Yet more as sausage-making.

So, any conclusion that you reach as a result of the experiment would apply to your human body and the equipment, including the film. — Harry Hindu

Beyond the broad gist that is unscientific, I have no idea what you're trying to say.

If consciousness is simply a processing of information in memory, then "mechanical" (your term that I questioned your use of and which you have not clarified, not mine) devices qualify as conscious. — Harry Hindu

Sure, and if by "in superposition" we mean "is made of wood", the table is in superposition. So what?

No, I mean that there is no falsifiable theory — Harry Hindu

No falsifiable theory means no testable theory. Again, are you absolutely sure you've done your research here?

With all that, beginning with that double-damned double slit, it’s easy to see where human consciousness could be deemed responsible for the actions outside itself. Leave it to a human, to attribute that of which he has precious little understanding, as being responsible for that of which he has, arguably, only slightly more. — Mww

Haha yes! :100: And to make a law of ignorance.

I meant, would it be easier if we only needed conjugation from complex analysis, then I remembered that pretty much everything in QFT is commutators. Still... that's not too difficult either.

I know how to get from simple fields to wavefunctions and from densities to wavefunctions uniquely -- that's simple enough.

I think we can limit complex analysis to that which is needed to prove the relativistic Hohenberg Kohn theorems and maybe get from the real observables of axiomatic QFT to the realdensities of density functional theory with only complex conjugates. From then on, any complex wavefunction can just be replaced by the time-dependent charge and current densities in principle. Would that be sufficient?

Pointing out that God-worship is not philosophy is not a hate crime.

Crazy religious nuts object to relativity in physics because they think it will lead to moral relativism. Don’t give them any ammo. — Pfhorrest

It's just an impression. I've had a hard time finding any data on this at all. I guess it's an odd question to ask someone.

Police often have to make split-second, life and death decisions — NOS4A2

Or 8 minute life and death decisions apparently.

I wonder though, did Wigner actually come right and declare explicitly that consciousness causes collapse, or did somebody take his “....consciousness is necessary for the completion of any quantum experiment...” and translate it thus. — Mww

My understanding is that was his view, since that seems to be the view he recanted later. He argued (unreasonably) that, while it's fine for the lab with an unconscious measuring device to be in superposition, it couldn't be in superposition with a human observer inside, thus the human observer inside must have collapsed the wavefunction of the lab before Wigner did.

Even von Neumann stated the wavefunction collapse can happen anywhere on the chain from measuring device to “subjective perception”, but subjective perception is not necessarily consciousness, but only a partial constituency of it. And happening at, is not the same as causality for. — Mww

And Von Neumann was not a wavefunction realist.

You don't actually care to help others understand, rather you use someone's ignorance to justify being an asshole. — khaled

Thank you for exemplifying my point: anything in, sausages out.

Yeah fdrake is awesome and I would love to see him continue what he was doing in this thread; or for someone else to take over where he left off. — Pfhorrest

I can do some more of the basic axiomatic maths, but I've been cheating and looking ahead at axiomatic QFT and decided that I really need to study more mathematics. I don't know C*-algebra from a 32C-wonderbra

I wish I had this site when I was at school, because I suspect that, with the right wording, you could make @fdrake do a lot of your homework.

Interesting thread. Ambitious too.

:up:

How do you sense without consciousness? — Pop

How does a computer sense when I hit the space bar?

Pretty easy to see where your sympathies lay, I must say. — Mww

I am a fine Feynman man!

Those lectures are here: https://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu, In which Vol3 has a nice easy dissertation on varieties of double slits , but nothing about......er......boobies. Or colored lights. — Mww

The lights are in there. The boobies are not, however they do feature in 'Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman' viz. his nude portrait of Marie Curie discovering radium.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in this system is that those who disagree with the consensus and plan to act immorally because of their immoral beliefs are obligated to terminate their membership in the group humanity. This is because it would remove their immoral belief and thus prevent them from acting immorally. But take heart! The majority of humanity could just vote that people shouldn't be terminated or exiled for having immoral beliefs, even if they plan to act on them. — Aleph Numbers

This seems to presuppose an outcome of precisely the kind of majority view that should have primacy.

Can you supply an accessible reference for that colored light/boogie double slit experiment? Accessible meaning free.....I’m a YankeeVirgoBabyboomer, and paying for stuff for which I have no real use is anathema to me. But it is new and therefore interesting, so.....I’d appreciate it. — Mww

It's in Feynman's Lectures on Physics Vol 3 which, far from free, is quite expensive. I'll find something though when I get a mo.

True enough, but what experiment can be set up, and by association, what experimental setup can there be, that doesn’t have a conscious agency for its causality? — Mww

The several I mentioned above. Sure, a person needs to set it up at the start and, sure, a person needs to check something at the end. But there are variables in between in which we can retrospectively determine whether a system remained in superposition or collapsed without conscious intervention.

Again, you'd have to define consciousness to assert when it absent and when it isn't. If it were absent at what point do you observe the results. If the results are on a sheet of paper, is not the paper composed of electrons? When does the wave function of the paper containing ink marks collapse - when looked at by human eyes or when it was printed out? Did the printer collapse the wave function? — Harry Hindu

None of this impacts the particular thought experiment described. QM is a statistical theory. If there is a possibility of getting stripes instead of boobies, then as you repeat the experiment you ought to get stripes some of the time. Claiming the film is in superposition until observed is experimentally falsifiable.

So no, my idea that consciousness is a measurement isn't outrageous — Harry Hindu

I have never disputed that a conscious observation can or would collapse a wavefunction. The claim was that consciousness is essential for wavefunction collapse. This is what I hope I have demonstrated is false.

There is no scientific theory of consciousness? Are you absolutely sure about that? Do you not instead mean there is no complete theory? That is true, and my wording reflected that.

What philosophy could learn from relativity is not to impose human psychological frameworks for understanding the world on the world itself, that the ways we think and what we think important are not objectively useful. It should learn that what is true for me is not necessarily true for you, that while there might be a direct map from my experience to yours, one is not necessarily true and the other false. — Kenosha Kid

This wording is not great, I apologise. Obviously tons of philosophers have greked this, and some well before physicists did (e.g. Kant). What I meant was that, in the sciences, paradigm shifts like Darwinism and relativity a) can't be ignored (empiricism), and b) seed new ways of thinking in other fields. Darwinism, for instance, has had a huge impact on cosmology despite having little in common.

Whereas frameworks that precede these seem to have a longer shelf-life in philosophy. For instance, I think that most physicists would probably reject moral objectivism, whereas most philosophers I've spoken to believe it is true, and I do think that relativity, while having nothing to do with morality, did impact how we think generally about objective frameworks. Like I say, philosophers got there first, but the effects seem less pervasive.

Who says that ↪Kenosha Kid actually cited a case of a wavefunction collapsing without consciousness? Wouldnt they have to provide a theory of consciousness to assert such a thing? — Harry Hindu

Why would you need a theory of consciousness to examine an experimental setup where consciousness is absent? That's absurd.

KK has to assume that some measuring device isn't conscious - whatever that means as KK is unwilling to address it so they are leaving a huge gap of an explanation in their explanation. — Harry Hindu

There's no gap. Not assuming that non-living objects are unconscious is consistent with every single element of scientific understanding of consciousness. Yours is the outrageous claim. I defend your freedom to believe incredible things, but don't push your burden of proof onto me.

And which laws are they?
— Kenosha Kid

Those of quantum field theory, e.g. the Dirac and Klein-Gordon equations. — Dfpolis

You're really flip-flopping on this issue. First you say that theory must be accurate or else complete fiction, i.e. you cannot have a good theory that isn't perfectly representative of nature, then you say:

You are confusing the laws of physics, which are approximate descriptions, with the laws of nature they seek to describe. — Dfpolis

And now you're back to theory being law itself. Can you have this argument by yourself and let me answer the winner? It will save time.

Quantum field theories do not have 'laws'. As I said, this is archaic language. Instead, it has fields and those fields have properties and those properties dictate classical physical law.

You do have a general mathematical framework which dictate other laws like conservation laws, but again these are categories (symmetry groups), not independent dictates on behaviour. You have probability laws too, though those aren't unconnected to symmetry groups.

They are a mathematical mechanism used to represent the mediation of Fermion-Fermion interactions by Boson fields -- in other words, to describe the laws by which quanta interact. — Dfpolis

Greens functions tell us the probability of a particle being at position (x, y, z) at time t given that it was at position (X, Y, Z) at time T. It is a function of the time-dependent wavefunction. So you're effectively saying that each wavefunction is a law.

The particles you mention are extremely massive. — Dfpolis

Yes, that was the point. Your argument was that mediators of physical law aren't massive and don't gravitate. Most of them are massive and all if them gravitate. In QFT these are what replace the laws of physics like Coulomb's law. As I keep saying, at the level of the quantum field, the idea of these being laws is not useful. They are *things*.

I don't appreciate how you make me out to be some sort of religious fanatic being forcefully ignorant of how QM works. I'm not an expert. Every 2 lines I say "In my understanding". I'm not trying to rewrite or misinterpret on purpose, I just don't have a degree, so don't be an ass about it. — khaled

I haven't been an ass about your ignorance at all. Your mode of conversation is: anything goes in; the same thing comes out. This is good for making sausages and nothing else. As I said, always interpreting NOT X as evidence for X demonstrates not ignorance but a complete indifference toward facts that conflict with your belief.

This is literally the first example you have given where "observation" is done without a conscious human. Why couldn't you just start with that? — khaled

All my examples demonstrated the same thing. But glad this one nailed it for you.

what is true will be true for all observers — Banno

The length of a moving rod? The time on a clock? The velocity of a moving body? These are all observables; they are not invariant.

Invariant laws of physics was the project of relativity (the second postulate being an ought) and this led to a weakening of what was thought invariant (in terms of categories... obviously a strengthening in terms of robustness of theory). Energy is no longer invariant, but (energy, momentum) is. Charge is no longer invariant but (charge, current) is. But these are counterintuitive as observables.

Relativity is specific to laws of physics in the same way that natural selection is specific to terrestrial biology. The important thing about both is that, in science at least, they destroyed our reliance on intuitions, on biases toward imposing on the world the character of our own evolved cognitive frameworks.

It is counterintuitive that there is no special frame which pins down the chronology of two distant events just as it is counterintuitive that death creates species. Nonetheless these are true, and they act as a lesson to be aware of the sources of our assumptions and to avoid the trap of valuing the attractiveness of an idea. The judge here is empirical evidence, and that evidence demands that we forego our intuitions and proclivities.

Philosophy is not empirical and has no such judge. If Platonism appeals to you, be a Platonist. If dualism appeals to you, be a dualist. This frees up philosophy somewhat but also confines it. Our intuitions and proclivities are not demolished, and we're doomed to make the same errors of bias as ever.

What philosophy could learn from relativity is not to impose human psychological frameworks for understanding the world on the world itself, that the ways we think and what we think important are not objectively useful. It should learn that what is true for me is not necessarily true for you, that while there might be a direct map from my experience to yours, one is not necessarily true and the other false.

This should be especially considered when dealing with concepts that are clearly cultural, i.e. localised.

No, quantum fields are subject to the laws of nature. — Dfpolis

And which laws are they?

Baloney. If you think this is true, provide a reputable reference. — Dfpolis

That's quite lazy. I just Googled 'physical law in quantum theory' and there's plenty of reputable references on page 1'. First result is: https://www.quantamagazine.org/there-are-no-laws-of-physics-theres-only-the-landscape-20180604/

They correspond to the propagators (Green's functions) in the equations describing the laws of motion. — Dfpolis

Propagators are not laws. They are tools.

The laws of nature have no mass and have no gravitational interactions. — Dfpolis

W bosons. Z bosons. Gluons possibly. The Higgs boson definitely. In fact, pretty much all of them. Even photons have gravitation. You might have heard of Einstein and Eddington?

What has evolved is our understanding off the laws. You are confusing the laws of physics, which are approximate descriptions, with the laws of nature they seek to describe. — Dfpolis

This is the exact opposite of your earlier claim that I responded to, in which you said:

to describe something that does not exist is to spin fiction — Dfpolis

All descriptions of laws are approximate: neither exact nor fiction. Youre employing a false dichotomy fallacy.

It is not a fallacy to say that if a theory contains no term x, it will never have a proposition containing x as a term. — Dfpolis

Science is not a theory, so this is irrelevant. To say that because there is no theory containing the term X, there will never be a theory containing the term x, is fallacious. Compounding it with a straw man fallacy doesn't help.

Boom! Thank you!

They are immaterial because it would be a category error to ask what the laws are made of. — Dfpolis

Quantum fields.

In modern physics, the concept of physical law is archaic. Instead, you have interaction fields. These are ambiguous, but considered material. That is, they have properties, state, dynamics, etc.

The laws are discovered in nature, and so they are not human constructs. Nor are the laws our descriptions of them, for to describe something that does not exist is to spin fiction. — Dfpolis

Laws evolve. It's not a 'exactly true'/'complete fiction' dichotomy. You can send a probe bouncing around the solar system and landing in your back garden with Newton's laws alone. But they are still only approximations to Einstein's, which in turn will be approximations to something else like string theory, which will be an approximation to etc.

As there is no primitive in natural science that corresponds to intention or awareness, no matter how we inter-relate the basic concepts of natural science, we will never construct a theory that concludes "and therefore there is awareness." — Dfpolis

This is a fallacy. If you want to make God laugh, start a sentence with 'Science will never'.

I found it in deep hue, btw. — frank

Phew! That was a rollercoaster!